It is uncanny sometimes how Bruce and I, while having very different blogging styles, often have similar ideas in mind. This morning, when I checked the blog, I was delighted to discover his latest, How “Progressive” Are You? in large part because he had put the word “progressive” in quotation marks.

Liberal used to mean giving people the freedom to act on their own. Now it forcing people to toe the line of “progressive” government.

When I was first on my very own (age 18) I had $50 and a fiber board suitcase which held my other shirt and some underwear. I went to college where I worked for my tuition and lived by my wits. My studies in the “liberal arts” reinforced what I already knew: there is no free lunch.

Today, liberals and “progressives” put a great premium on “wants” and “feelings.” In some respects, we can never satisfy our wants and you allow your feelings to take charge of your life if you have no gratitude for the wonderfulness of life itself.

When I was a youngster in the home, I never got farther than down town in a small town. Now I have traveled the globe and met scores of cultures and studied interesting societies both past and present.

As a conservative, I have discovered a remarkable sameness among people. But classicists would consider my views and understandings to be liberal. How confusing things are when so many fail to understand the verities we were taught by Swift and Carroll.

I find the modern American “progressive” or liberal to be the among the most repressive regimes in the world of today. That includes Obama who is but one degree from a Peron, Salazar, Franco, Putin or Arafat.

To me, “progressive” has come to signal reform through massive government growth and social-democratic policies. However, in many circles, “progressive” is roughly equivalent to “not a social con.”

Thus, we find Meghan McCain referring to herself as a “progressive Republican” to distinguish herself as someone on the Right who supports gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research. She uses the term “progressive” to make her politics more palatable to her liberal hipster friends who have declared conservatism the epitome of uncool.

Perhaps conservatives need to work a little harder on countering the positive branding of a political philosophy that yields such negative outcomes.

What actually separates an overwhelmingly big government from the oligarchy or dictatorship?

Big governments are consumed with efficiency. Not long ago, my wife and I were on a train in Japan. We each had a suitcase by our feet. The “pusher” on the platform in Shinkasa Station only saw the open space between us and the other passengers, so he shoved two more people into the car. Two women stood on top of our suitcases in order to make room. We were embarrassed, but they bowed and smiled and apologized for standing on our luggage. All things being equal, we should have balanced the suitcases on our heads.

Such efficiency shapes the culture. The Japanese rent “love” rooms by the hour in hotels because rice paper walls are not private. Dogs are restricted in size and they have their barks removed. Living space is measured by the tatami mat.

The utility of government regulation can not be denied. But the exuberance of government regulation is the playground of petty satraps.

Progressive social policies — the welfare state — have devastated the family structure of vulnerable minorities. Progressive attitudes on sexuality have similarly damaged the broader social fabric and, ironically, made women more sexually objectified than before the sexual revolution.

Progressive education policies — the triumph of self-esteem over actual learning — have made our public schools the most expensive and worst performing in the industrialized world.

Applied to post-colonial Africa, progressive policies have given the world Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe.

Most recently, progressive policies applied to credit and mortgage lending — i.e. the socialization of credit risks for political purposes — have been an economic disaster.

All things considered, any policy advocated by the progressive left should be treated skeptically.

It depends on which era of Progressivism you are talking about, because it does go through different shifts of attitude. You have the old Reformist Left of Croly that came about to deal with the problems of government and economics of the late 19th and 20th century. He didn’t push a larger government but wanted more popular soverignity. He saw things like the Constitution, State Governments, Parties as barriers to the people’s will and sought to change that. Interestingly enough, Croly’s progressive view of Government has largely come to pass. He believed in a more powerful executive and the use of a civil service/Administration. On the economic front, he believed the government had to step in to help the worker because he was different type of person than the property owner. The wager earner couldn’t just hope for propety protection, his property was his work and his property rights would be insurance against sickness and injury. This would lead to regulation of business by Government for things like safety and protection of union rights. Croly would be play with government growth because, with his reforms, the government would be only act in the people’s will.

The Reformist Left dies out when the Anti War Left grows in the 60′s and 70s. They see the system as a failure and only radical change can save America, because she is too far gone due to the Vietnaim War and the horrors of racial injustice. The Cultural Left comes after that, it comes about from the loss of labor unions in progressivism. The Cultural Left deals more with removing stigmas of race, gender and sexual orientation and less focused on economic matters.

Thats basically an overview of the history of American progressivism…Obama is probably seen as a return to Reformist Left.

When he was a young man in the 1920s, my grandfather (a staunch conservative in later life) attended some of the Communist Party meetings in New York City. He told me that the Party leaders warned everyone never to call themselves Communists, because the word was such an anathema to most Americans. Instead, they were instructed to call themselves Liberals, Leftists, Progressives, or Activists.

Larger government is larger government. I personally am not persuaded if someone tries to say “It’s only economic regulation”, “it’s only social regulation”, “it’s only regulating hate speech” or what have you.